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Patrick Pexton

Is the Washington Post “pro-gay”? [link fixed]

And because our profession lives and dies on the First Amendment — one of the libertarian cornerstones of the Constitution — most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do. We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies pretty much when, where and how we choose.

Yet many Americans feel that allowing gay men and lesbians to marry diminishes the value of their heterosexual marriages. I don’t understand this. The lesbian couple down the street raising two kids or the two men across the hall in your condominium — how do those unions take anything away from the sanctity, fidelity or joy you take in your heterosexual marriage? Isn’t your marriage, at root, based on the love and commitment you have for your spouse, not what you think about the neighbors? …

Still, just as I have written that The Post should do a better job of covering and understanding the anti-abortion movement, The Post should do a better job of understanding and conveying to readers, with detachment and objectivity, the beliefs and the fears of social conservatives.

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Yet many Americans feel that allowing gay men and lesbians to marry diminishes the value of their heterosexual marriages. I don’t understand this. The lesbian couple down the street raising two kids or the two men across the hall in your condominium — how do those unions take anything away from the sanctity, fidelity or joy you take in your heterosexual marriage? Isn’t your marriage, at root, based on the love and commitment you have for your spouse, not what you think about the neighbors? …

I do hope, but doubt, that Mr Pexton would reserve this same live-and-let-live attitude about the father and daughter who have a secret together or the woman who wants to marry a man who is already married and his wife is fine with it.

Yeh after Obamacare I don’t think we can take the ‘leave your hands off my body’ crowd seriously.

CW on February 23, 2013 at 1:23 PM

Exactly. Get your splinter-group of society the hell off my religion and then we can talk about “your hands off my body”. We are already having do discuss serious measures to keep from becoming Canadians.

Marriages don’t belong to the “partners” alone – It’s a three way with the state (society and government). It’s a public contract obligating its participants to each other and society for a particular point and purpose – to manage the natural biological consequences of male female relationships in a way that preserves property/ordered liberty and a stable, less violent society.

It is to protect women by law from abandonment of themselves and children. It is to encourage recognition of legitimate heirs of the male and his primary responsibility to their support to promote his wife’s fidelity to himself.

It’s recognition, obligations and protections are to discourage what comes naturally OUTSIDE of marriage, to discourage fatherless children so that the larger society doesn’t have to support them or deal with the sociological consequences of neglected, malnourishes, malsocialized, uneducated and undisciplined children – crime, imbecilism, and sexually transmitted diseases that cause infirmity.

Marriage calls for limits that don’t come naturally. It rewards the sacrifice with rights, sets it above other relationships;

Suddenly, constraining procreation is supposed to have nothing to do with it.
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Gay marriage is not designed to constrain or promote sexual behaviout that makes children. And to call it equal removes the recognition of that purpose in heterosexual marriage, and confuses marriage for an emotional attachment residing at one address for as long as the partners feel like it.

I love how they assume that the argument against gay marriage must be only reglious or bigoted. That there is no societal compeling reason other than those. I know many people including myself who can break down the case, and have done it many times on Hot air why legally gay marriage can be opening a can of worms for the legal system and marriage.

SSM recognition is about little more than gays seeking legitimacy. Unless you shout from the mountaintops and from sea to shining sea that two men (probably more) b*ning each other in the a** and giving each other r*m jobs are engaged in the most awesomely awesome and virtuous activities known to mankind, you’re mouth-breathing cave dweller who must be purged from society. Oh, and gays are to be exalted as virtuous solely because they engage in homosexual conduct as opposed to any other personal quality or accomplishment.

“Marriages don’t belong to the “partners” alone – It’s a three way with the state (society and government). It’s a public contract obligating its participants to each other and society for a particular point and purpose – to manage the natural biological consequences of male female relationships in a way that preserves property/ordered liberty and a stable, less violent society.”

SarahW on February 23, 2013 at 2:01 PM

Then society and the government get to define the terms of that public contract and can change them as they like. You can’t invite the government into a social or religious institution and not expect it to have absolute power over that institution.

The marriage issue, more than probably anything else, demonstrates how short-sighted social “conservatives” are. They missed their best, and only, chance at “preserving marriage” many years ago when they decided the government should play a role in the regulation of marriage, based in part on the kind of reasoning you articulated in your post. Tough beans, I say.

I love how they assume that the argument against gay marriage must be only reglious or bigoted. That there is no societal compeling reason other than those.

melle1228 on February 23, 2013 at 2:03 PM

Even something as basic as “Could there possibly be a reason which transcends my culture and my pweshus feewings that monogamous, heterosexual pairings have been the ‘right way’ for every civilized culture worthy of the name (and even a good many that weren’t) since art consisted of cave paintings?”

It is a frightening state of affairs when a bongo-thumping tribal who paid his bride’s dowry in goats knows better than to meddle with a pillar of organized life than many ‘civilized’ people…and would reach for his spear if said liberal spouted off about how glorious at-will abortion was within his hearing.

Armin, not at all. The libertarian position on that makes no sense at all.

The law can change, it has before. Whether is should change in the most fundamental way possible is another.

This is not a method of breaking the contract or giving one partner a more distinct legal identity – this is changing what marriage is FOR.

I perhaps would not necessarily mind the change if people would confess what it is they want to do. They seem to feign or even possess ignorance of it’s point and purpose.

Which should be obvious but apparently is obscured in talk of setting up household with someone you like.

Marriage is about constraining reproduction; in a state of nature men and women make children and civilization depends upon constraining this reality and its effect. Marriage law protects property and ordered liberty by channeling it into a one legal form ideal for transfer of property, management of human relationships giving priority to unnatural monogamy. THe law whuniversally protects against other types of unions being acceptable (polyamory, polygamy, incest, etc).